This is the Hardest Job a Manager Has …

… but … the organization’s decided to make a change.

I’m here to not apologize for my recent absence. I started blogging a little over 7 years ago; tried it, liked it, and kept going. I had no really clear plan other than I’d do it as long as I was enjoying it.

Lately, I’m not enjoying it. (I think the technical term for it is “being in a funk”). So I’m taking a break. (It’s not you, it’s me. Continue to see other blogs. We were never exclusive)

This isn’t the first time in a funk — motivation wanes and waxes. Each time I eventually found something interesting to blog about, and posting links filled the gaps. Even as things slowed down over time — I went from multiple posts pretty much every day to eventually one post on most weekdays. In the past several years I had a pick-me-up this time of year in the form of the Science Online conference. Getting to see friends and meeting new people was a lot of fun, and there were always new things discussed in the sessions that rejuvenated me. But the organization folded last year, which is a long story, but the result is that there is no conference (which should have been happening this very week). No salvation there. It’s gotten tiresome slogging through feeds and lists looking for interesting things, and my normal fallback — ranting about bad physics reporting — just feels like it’s all been done.

There are bloggers out there who have done this longer, but I think most have not (heavily skewed by a large infant mortality rate). I expect I’ll return — someday — but if and when that happens there are no guarantees as to the frequency of my posting. We will see.

Hello, Boys. I'm Back!

Got my internet working (yay! It was the salmon mousse a dead modem) and completed a trip to a DARPA program review, where I got to see lots of neat things I can’t blog about. Sorry.

You Have Entered … the Physics Zone

I’m attending ICAP (International Conference on Atomic Physics) this week. I would say I’m at the conference, but it’s in DC, so I didn’t have any travel to get (t)here, but it means commuting to the conference site and that makes for a long day. An added bonus is no wifi at the site, so my contact with the digital world while I’m there is more or less limited to a few tweets on my phone.

N is for Neville Who Died of Ennui

As regular readers know, I work for the US government. I discovered over the summer that even though being furloughed affords me extra time, it’s not time where I’m generally in a mood to blog. The pointlessness and selfishness of this government shutdown has absolutely killed my enthusiasm. To paraphrase a colleague, they have dug another morale hole for us to fall into.

We’ll see what happens.

My Apologies

The site has been flaky, especially of late. I understand pages will not always load, and it’s been a problem loading the admin pages as well. There have been occasions where I could not write or post anything because everything was acting up during my window of time where I was trying to blog. I’m not sure what the fix is, or when it might happen.

So, in the words of mad prince Ludwig, many apologies for the inconwenience.

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